the other hand, Louis granted privileges to the towns and consistently
used their alliance to overthrow the nobility. He
watched the roads, built new ones, opened markets, protected
the only bankers of the country, the Jews, and reorganized the
administration so as to draw the utmost revenue possible from
the prosperity thus secured. His ambition led him into foreign
entanglements; he made a secret treaty with the duke of Savoy
which was to give him right of way to Genoa, and made arrangements
for a partition of the duchy of Milan. The alliance with
Savoy was sealed by the marriage of Louis with Charlotte,
daughter of Duke Lodovico, in 1452, in spite of the formal
prohibition of Charles VII. The king marched south, but
withdrew again leaving his son unsubdued. Four years later,
as Charles came to the Bourbonnais, Louis, fearing for his life,
fled to Flanders to the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy,
leaving Dauphiné to be definitely annexed to the crown
of France. The policy of the dauphin was reversed, his ten
years’ work was undone. Meanwhile he was installed in the
castle of Genappe, in Brabant, where he remained until the death
of his father. For this he waited impatiently five years, keeping
himself posted by spies of every stage of the king’s last illness,
and thus laying himself open to the accusation, believed in
by Charles himself, that he had hastened the end by poison, a
charge which modern historians deny.
On the 15th of August 1461, Louis was anointed at Reims, and Philip of Burgundy, as doyen of the peers of France, placed the crown on his head. For two months Philip acted as though the king were still his protégé. But in the midst of the festivities with which he was entertaining Paris, the duke found that Louis ventured to refuse his candidates for office, and on the 24th of September the new king left abruptly for Touraine. His first act was to strike at the faithful ministers of Charles VII. Pierre de Brézé and Antoine de Chabannes were captured and imprisoned, as well as men of sterling worth like Étienne Chevalier. But the king’s shrewdness triumphed before long over his vengeance, and the more serviceable of the officers of Charles VII. were for the most part soon reinstated, Louis’ advisers were mostly men of the middle class. He had a ready purse for men of talent, drawing them from England, Scotland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Such a motley throng of competent men had never before been seen at the court of France. Their origin, their previous crimes or virtues, their avarice or brutality, were indifferent to him so long as they served him loyally. Torture and imprisonment awaited them, whether of high or low degree, if he fancied that they were betraying him. Among the most prominent of these men in addition to Brézé, Chevalier and Chabannes, were Tristan Lermite, Jean de Daillon, Olivier le Dain (the barber), and after 1472, Philippe de Commines, drawn from the service of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, who became his most intimate adviser and biographer. Surrounded by men like these Louis fought the last great battle of French royalty with feudalism.
Louis XI. began his reign with the same high-handed treatment of the nobles which had marked his rule in Dauphiné, going so far as to forbid them to hunt without his permission. He forced the clergy to pay long-neglected feudal dues, and intrigued against the great houses of Anjou and Orleans in Italy. The malcontent nobles soon began to plan revolt. Discharged officers of Charles VII. like Jean Dunois and John II. duke of Bourbon, stirred up hostility to the new men of the king, and Francis II. duke of Brittany was soon embroiled with Louis over an attempt to assert royal control over that practically independent duchy. The dissatisfied nobility found their greatest ally in Charles the Bold, afterwards duke of Burgundy, and in 1465 formed a “league of public welfare” and declared war on their king. The nominal head was the king’s brother Charles, duke of Berry, then eighteen years old, a weak character, the tool of the rebels as he was later the dupe of the king. Every great noble in France was in the league, except Gaston de Foix—who kept the south of France for the king,—and the counts of Vendôme and Eu. The whole country seemed on the verge of anarchy. It was saved by the refusal of the lesser gentry to rise, and by the alliance of the king with the citizen class, which was not led astray by the pretences of regard for the public weal which cloaked the designs of the leaguers. After a successful campaign in the Bourbonnais, Louis fought an indecisive battle with the Burgundians who had marched on Paris at Montlhéry, on the 16th of July 1465, and then stood a short siege in Paris. On the 28th of September he made a truce with Charles the Bold, and in October the treaties of Conflans and Saint Maur-les-Fossés, ended the war. The king yielded at all points; gave up the “Somme towns” in Picardy, for which he had paid 200,000 gold crowns, to Philip the Good, thus bringing the Burgundians close to Paris and to Normandy. Charles, the king’s brother, was given Normandy as an apanage, thus joining the territories of the rebellious duke of Brittany with those of Charles the Bold. The public weal was no longer talked about, while the kingdom was plundered both by royal tax gatherers and by unsubdued feudal lords to pay the cost of the war.
After this failure Louis set to work to repair his mistakes. The duke of Bourbon was won over by the gift of the government of the centre of France, and Dunois and Chabannes by restoring them their estates. Two months after he had granted Normandy to Charles, he took advantage of a quarrel between the duke of Brittany and his brother to take it again, sending the duke of Bourbon “to aid” Charles, while Dunois and Chabannes prepared for the struggle with Burgundy. The death of Duke Philip, on the 15th of June 1467, gave Charles the Bold a free hand. He gained over Edward IV. of England, whose sister Margaret he married; but while he was celebrating the wedding Louis invaded Brittany and detached Duke Francis from alliance with him. Normandy was completely reduced. The king had won a great triumph. It was followed by his greatest mistake. Eager as he always was to try diplomacy instead of war, Louis sent a gift of 60,000 golden crowns to Charles and secured a safe conduct from him for an interview. The interview took place on the 9th of October 1468 at Péronne. News came on the 11th that, instigated by the king of France, the people of Liége had massacred their bishop and the ducal governor. The news was false, but Charles, furious at such apparent duplicity, took Louis prisoner, only releasing him, three days later, on the king signing a treaty which granted Flanders freedom from interference from the parlement of Paris, and agreeing to accompany Charles to the siege of his own ally, Liége. Louis made light of the whole incident in his letters, but it marked the greatest humiliation of his life, and he was only too glad to find a scapegoat in Cardinal Jean Balue, who was accused of having plotted the treason of Péronne. Balue thereupon joined Guillaume de Harancourt, bishop of Verdun, in an intrigue to induce Charles of France to demand Champagne and Brie in accordance with the king’s promise to Charles the Bold, instead of distant Guienne where the king was determined to place him. The discovery of this conspiracy placed these two high dignitaries in prison (April 1469). Balue (q.v.) spent eleven years in prison quarters, comfortable enough, in spite of the legend to the contrary, while Harancourt was shut up in an iron cage until 1482. Then Louis, inducing his brother to accept Guienne,—where, surrounded by faithful royal officers, he was harmless for the time being,—undertook to play off the Lancastrians against Edward IV. who, as the ally of Charles the Bold, was menacing the coast of Normandy. Warwick, the king-maker, and Queen Margaret were aided in the expedition which in 1470 again placed Henry VI. upon the English throne. In the autumn Louis himself took the offensive, and royal troops overran Picardy and the Maconnais to Burgundy itself. But the tide turned against Louis in 1471. While Edward IV. won back England by the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, Charles the Bold besieged Amiens, and Louis was glad to make a truce, availing himself of the double dealing of the constable, the count of Saint Pol, who, trying to win an independent position for himself in Picardy, refused his aid to Charles unless he would definitely join the French nobility in another rising against the king. This rising was to be aided by the invasion of France by John II. of Aragon, Yolande, duchess of Savoy, and Edward IV.
